My hands curl into fists against my thighs. “Cooking isn’t stupid.”
“He thought it was. Called it my ‘cute little hobby.’ Said I was wasting time that could be spent on something productive.” She laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “Three years of hearing that, and you start to believe it. Start to make yourself smaller so you don’t take up so much space. So you don’t annoy anyone with your existence.”
The fire crackles. I stare into it, trying to unclench my jaw.
“My team used to fight over who got to eat my MRE sides,” I say quietly. “Rice, beans, whatever. I could make that crap taste decent with the right combinations. They said it was a gift.”
Marcella is very still beside me. Waiting.
“Jimmy—my team leader—he used to say I should open a restaurant when I got out. Called me ‘Chef McGrath’ as a joke. Said I was wasted as a sniper when I could be making real money feeding people.” The memory surfaces, bittersweet. Jimmy with his easy grin, his terrible jokes, his way of making everyone feel like family. “He never got out.”
“Finn...”
“IED. Four years ago. Whole team except me.” The words come out flat, factual. It’s the only way I can say them. “Six men. Six brothers. And I was fifty meters away, checking a building, when the world exploded. Should have been with them.”
The silence stretches. I wait for the platitudes—it wasn’t your fault,they’d want you to be happy,everything happens for a reason. The empty words I’ve heard a hundred times from people who mean well but don’t understand that some wounds don’t heal, they just scar over.
“That’s an unbearable thing to carry,” Marcella says softly.
I look at her. She’s not crying, but her eyes are bright, and there’s something in her expression I don’t recognize at first. Then I do.
Sheseesme. Not the broken veteran, not the tragic story, not the cautionary tale. Just me, carrying something heavy, doing my best to keep moving forward.
“Yeah,” I manage. “It is.”
We sit with that for a moment. The fire burns. The wind howls. And somehow, the silence between us feels less like distance and more like understanding.
“The furniture,” Marcella says eventually, her voice gentle. “That’s how you honor them, isn’t it? By creating things that will last.”
My throat tightens. Nobody’s ever said it like that. Not even Moira, who knows me better than anyone.
“I don’t know if it’s honoring them,” I admit. “Sometimes it feels more like penance.”
“Maybe it can be both.”
I turn to look at her—really look—and find her watching me with an expression that makes my chest ache. Firelight plays across her face, highlighting the curve of her cheek, the fullness of her lips. She’s beautiful in a way that has nothing to do with conventional standards and everything to do with the warmth that radiates from her like heat from the hearth.
“You’re easy to talk to,” I say. The words surprise me.
Her smile is soft. Sad. “My ex would disagree.”
“Your ex was an idiot.”
She laughs, startled and genuine. “Yeah. He really was.”
The tension in the room shifts. Still charged, but warmer now. More intimate. I’m acutely aware of the space between us on the couch—not much, maybe two feet—and how easy it would be to close it.
Marcella reaches out toward the arm of the couch, tracing the carved details with her fingertips. “This is beautiful work,” she murmurs. “You can feel the care in every line.”
Her hand moves along the wood, and mine is resting there—I forgot I’d put it there—and suddenly her fingers brush against mine.
We both freeze.
The contact is small. Barely anything. Her fingertips against my knuckles, the barest whisper of touch. But it sends electricity arcing up my arm, and from the sharp intake of her breath, she feels it too.
Our eyes meet across the fire-lit space between us.
I should pull away. I should break the contact, make some excuse, retreat to safety. Every instinct honed by four years of isolation is screaming at me to run.
